


Seventeen Minutes

by jargonelle



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 18:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1909011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jargonelle/pseuds/jargonelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five ways Arnold Rimmer wasted seventeen minutes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seventeen Minutes

**Author's Note:**

> We all know that part in 'The End' where Lister doesn't know how to find the captain's office is just a ploy to talk to Kochanski, right?

It took seventeen minutes for Arnold to work out what he was going to say.

He was eight years old and his father's treasured commemorative plate lay in three big pieces, and numerous fragments, in a mess on the floor. It depicted the first ever Space Corps ship, just a few seconds before it exploded (the series celebrating the actual wreckage were worth a lot more), and his father had always told John, Howard and Frank that they too would appear on such a plate some day, their images immortalised within a shoddily painted circle.

Seventeen minutes Arnold had plotted and planned, and eventually it resulted in an ingenious excuse – better, even, than one Howard could have thought up on the spot! He had it all prepared: he had rehearsed his lines; he had practised looking sad and scared in the mirror (scared, he had discovered, he could manage rather naturally); he had also whacked himself on the forehead with a poker in order to make the bit about the pterodactyl more plausible. He was ready.

His father called him into the dining room, the table adorned with a crisp, folded newspaper and a pot of untouched tea.

Arnold stuttered, pathetically.

~~

There were only seventeen minutes left and Rimmer had two hours worth of work to do.

If only he hadn't spent all that time sharpening his pencils: all twelve of them were now so sharp that as soon as they came into contact with the paper, they drove a hole right through it. That meant he had to now go about blunting them all before he could even start thinking about question one. Not that you were allowed to use pencils for anything except diagrams and rough notes, and he’d no time to make notes and no knowledge with which to draw diagrams.

He was going to fail. Again.

Okay, seventeen minutes. He stretched his arms out in front of him, up over his head and then down by his sides in an attempt to conjure up some focus, but only succeeded in attracting the attention of the officer supervising the examination. She walked over and unceremoniously dumped a few extra sheets of paper on Rimmer’s desk, clearly confused as to why he was requesting them.

All he had to do was concentrate and ignore the fact that his pens were not arranged in their proper order.

He was doomed. 

~~

There. Perfect.

Well, the parting wasn’t quite straight and there were still a few stray curls defying all the laws of physics (which he hadn’t got round to remembering yet), but his hair looked better than it had done in weeks. Not that he normally had to bother doing much to it - one of the many, many benefits of having a disciplined haircut - but today was important. Today was special. Today he was going on his date with Samantha.

He finally drew away from the mirror after seventeen (seventeen?!) minutes of fiddling with that mutinous clump of hair round the back, and slapped his hand over his eyes in dismay. He peeked cautiously through a chink in his fingers at the clock on the wall, afraid of what its glaring digits would tell him. It wasn’t good news. Smeg. He had been running late prior to his attempt to make everything perfect… now, well, now she would have to be pretty damned desperate to have waited for him all that time. She must have been pretty desperate to agree to go out with Arnold J. Rimmer in the first place.

He arrived, panting, at the empty restaurant table, completely unsurprised.

~~

It was Lister’s fault; that went without saying. 

“The sealant! Where’s the sealant?” Rimmer had said, sticking his hand over the leak to temporarily plug it. Lister had been carting a trolley around all day - surely there must be something useful on it.

“I left it on Floor 359.”

“You left it on Floor 359?” They had only briefly stopped there whilst Lister had spoken to Petersen, committing mutiny by nattering on duty. Oh God…

“I had to leave it behind.”

At that point Rimmer normally would have folded his arms, but he needed them to stop raw sewage from spurting out all over the captain’s office. “Why, pray tell?”

“Because I had to make room for me pie, didn’t I?”

If Lister had been standing slightly closer to him, Rimmer would have stood back and allowed the sticky, slimy liquid to hit the smeghead in the face. Instead, Lister showed he had at least one brain cell by bolting out of the office. Rimmer really hoped he was planning to fetch help; although as third technician, Lister should have been the one to remain there getting splattered.

It was amazing that he was only left waiting for seventeen minutes.

~~

Rimmer stood perfectly still.

He had spent seventeen minutes worrying about what he was going to say to Lister, what possible godforsaken not-happening not-his-fault not-that-way-inclined excuse he could give when Lister finally woke up.

A part of him hoped that those seventeen precious minutes would not have been wasted, that Lister’s wheezy breath would groan into a drowsy morning slur before Rimmer’s nerve ran out. That Lister’s stupid eyes would open and he would stretch his stupid arms and turn his stupid face and see him, see Rimmer staring at him with what was undoubtedly an inappropriately caring look. At least then, it would be out of his hands, out in the open; the ball would be in Lister’s court and therefore Lister would be to blame for everything that happened. For better or for worse.

He pulled back his shoulders and clenched his fists, standing to attention. Surely Lister could not sleep forever…

The first sign of movement from Lister, the first incoherent mumble and Rimmer cracked. The familiar feeling of dread snaked up his spine and crushed it, sending Rimmer into a panic and back into his own bunk. 

Those seventeen minutes had been a waste after all.


End file.
